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About a month ago during the planning of this trip, Jeff realized that, once completed, there would have been only 3 states in all of the USA that he would not have visited yet.

Realizing that this was frustrating close to being a totally complete list, Jeff wondered which of the remaining states would have been practical to add to the list. Turns out that one state, the state of Montana, was only 11 miles out of the way from the nominal path to today’s stopping point of Cody, WY.

Having no particular place to go in Montana for this trip, the discussion came up of what constitutes a “visit” to a paritucular state. The general consensus was if you went to the bathroom in the state or slept there, then the state “counted” as being visted.

So, today I peed in Montana leaving only the following states left to visit after this trip:

• Alaska
• North Dakota

Tomorrow we head from Cody, WY to Yellowstone, Grand Teton and end up in Jackson, WY for a two night layover there. Our first “major” stop of the trip. Wow…the days are just flying by!

Hotels. To book or not to book, that is the question.

We’ve budgeted the month of July for the trip and, ideally, we would like to be able to wing it day by day with no particular schedule other than a rough target number of average miles per day and some knowledge of decent stopping points. However, there are some practical problems including mainly the remoteness of some large stretches and also availability concerns in several locations along the way. This dictates a bit more structure to the trip – certainly for some stops.

Research indicates that some of the stopping points will be problematic during this or any summer vacation season. This is especially true of our major landmark stops and of the towns along the Pacific Ocean. It would make sense to book these ahead of time, but without a fairly constrained plan, we have no idea exactly which nights to book where. We’re not really keen on sleeping in the car or wasting lots of miles to drive to available locations in land, etc.

Hence the question: To Book or Not to Book?

Our current strategy at this point is to book specific hotels for each night for the first week of the trip  including what appears to be the most difficult location – Jackson Hole, WY. – our first major stop. If nothing else, having the first week of days booked, gives us more time to consider the plan. We’ve booked each night with the option to cancel or move any booking up until 6:00pm on the day of stay without any cost. This gives us a fair amount of logistic flexibility moving forward, but also guarantees someplace to stay if holding the plan works out.

So far, we’re deciding not to book places in the larger cities because of significant number of options in each. It seems likely we can just wing those or perhaps book the day before as we travel. Before departing for the trip, we’ll also likely book the other major stops on the way because they seem the most risky. If we have to cancel or change it – so be it.

According to the plan, we need to have 25 different hotel bookings for the trip. Walking the value/comfort curve we have primarily selected Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express type locations for the single night stops and reserved the more luxury accomodations for the major two-night stops. With a bit of luck, perhaps some of the later stops will be free based on the good customer points accumulated for visits earlier in the trip, maybe!?

We just got back with the Vette from a day trip out to Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY. A sort of trial run trip as we prepare for our big trip in July 2008. This particular trip was with the Rochester Corvette Club and approximately 20 other Corvettes were there as well. It is always cool driving down the road with a parade of Corvettes, especially when you are near the front and can look in the rear view mirror and see a long string of front running lights behind you as all the cars hum along the road.

The group paused along the way at a rest stop on the Thurway (Port Byron) to meet up with some of the club members who were coming from farther east of the city. The weather, while somewhat cool – was pretty good, so the cars attracted lots of attention from people curious to see why there were so many Corvettes in one place. It is always fun to see people’s interest in the cars. For this particular trip, most people were driving C5′s or C6′s, but there were one or two each of C3′s and C4′s.

Anyway, this was our first time to Turning Stone and I have to say were were surprised by facility. We are Las Vegas regulars, usually spending one week in Las Vegas each year playing Black Jack, and usually find any regional casino as downright disappointing by comparison to virtually any major strip casino. However, the Turning Stone was in a similar class to a mid-range Las Vegas facility. In fact, we found it somewhat similar to the Red Rock Casino in Vegas. To be clear, it is not quite as upscale, but it is in a similar class and a pretty nice place. We’ll definately go back at some point and look forward to the trip again assuming the club does it again next year.

For the record, trip stats:

• Drove 220 miles, averaged 30.3 miles/gallon using less than 1/2 a tank of gas.
• Playing exculsively Black Jack, both Sandra and Jeff each made a profit.
• Sandra edged out Jeff by about $30 giving us a total profit of almost $230.